


fever for the fire

by Starships



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: A century of unrequited (?) love that boils over, Also fluff, Angst, But Riyo makes him work for it, Dom Exarch, F/M, Has our boy a lil feral, Lewd tail hand holding, Marking, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Possession, Post-ShB, Raen WoL, Size Kink, cum kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:35:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24341437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starships/pseuds/Starships
Summary: It started small, the ways in which she encroached his personal space. Insistent lunch invites, here and there. Never too often. Curiously always present on his second and third day strolls through the Crystalline Mean to take supply counts. Lounging at the Dossal Gate, creamy scales shining like liquid gold in the sun, idly checking her nails for chips like she had nowhere to be. She was dogging his entire schedule, a pearl always in the corner of his eye.But then it escalated.
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 26
Kudos: 157





	1. Chapter 1

Riyo’s hair was the color of stale blood in the Amaurotine dawn, and the shadows under her eyes looked to be carved from marble. Every ilm of her skin was bruised, scraped, or sallow, and no matter how she tried she couldn’t cease shivering. 

She was grinning, but she looked like shit.

G’raha’s fingers itched in their need to touch her; in the days since Emet-Selch had taken him, he had thought of very little but this need. His tail would betray his impatience were it visible; instead, his face remained placid, and his hands remained at his side.

Slowly, he reminded himself. Proceed slowly. 

He limped nearer and occupied as much of her space as he dared. He deserved no less than her wrath at its fullest, but even should her fist break his jaw or her aether sunder him to pieces, he would never choose to leave her orbit. 

_Could_ never, he thought. He should feel suffocated, finding someone so inescapable. He should have been gasping for air until he drowned, right here at her feet. Instead, all he wanted to do was rise up from the dark and touch the sun.

When she bade him good morning, he wept and he shook but he did not falter. He kept his feet firmly planted, held his cursed eyes against hers as she assessed him. Weighed his worth.

It was not the first time, and it would not be the last. But it felt to him like it was the most important. 

“Ah. ’Tis good to be awake.”

And, finally—it was.

* * *

It started small, the ways in which she encroached his personal space. Insistent lunch invites, here and there. Never too often. Curiously always present on his second and third day strolls through the Crystalline Mean to take supply counts. Lounging at the Dossal Gate, creamy scales shining like liquid gold in the sun, idly checking her nails for chips like she had nowhere to be. She was dogging his entire schedule, a pearl always in the corner of his eye.

But then it escalated.

She brought him books from the Source, directly into the Ocular. On most of these occasions, the guard reported never even seeing her. Once in the Umbilicus, he found tea. Masala chai, a piece of home he missed most dearly, overspiced as he was wont to do—as she _knew_ he liked.

From before. _Before_.

Heat shot through his spine and settled somewhere too low to bear thinking about. He felt young, budding. Riyo was taunting him, pressing in on his space from all sides, and she knew he had nowhere to run. After everything, after _everything_ , he was terribly easy to cage; his guilt alone was far too heavy for him to even breathe fully, let alone _escape_ himself.

Whatever game she was playing, he had already forfeit—he just hadn’t decided when to lower his cards.

* * *

It was a rest day at the Crystarium. 

She was eating a Dwarf-sized sandwich from a delicate perch in The Wandering Stairs and had literal egg on her face. There was a hearty, smelly tankard of ale in front of her, a drunken Ronso staring at her tits, and precisely zero available stools at the bar. She wore no armor, favoring instead a sleeveless tunic and shorts. Soft, feminine fabrics. She looked ready for the summer sun, but he knew she was lit only by her own fire within — the weather today, after all, was downright dreadful. Norvrandt no longer had the same seasons he knew on the Source, but the Crystarium was not even half done with what he privately thought of as the “muddy shit season”: his feet were always cold and wet, his tail was always cold and wet, and he had to pretend the chill of his transformed arm was somehow comfortable. 

A cold, wet, muddy, _miserable_ winter. 

And here Riyo sat, drunk and smeared in egg, vermillion hair blazing against the world even with no sun to light it. Her freckled, scaled shoulders were out and she wasn’t even cold.

He felt a twisted satisfaction curling in his stomach, a spreading pool of content rippling through him just from watching her. 

She was warm, happy, full. 

He had a bizarre urge to hold her down and feed her. 

With no small difficulty, he put one foot in front of the other, carried himself in his natural direction towards her. He began the mental process of steeling himself against her, as he always has to: calm face, relax the tail. Shift the robes as needed. You have a job to do. 

Focus.

She was only a person. No matter how she loomed in his mind, she was only _herself._

His old friend Riyo. 

“I’d ask to sit, but I’m afraid there are no stools,” he started, dry voice cracking only a smidgeon. 

Well. That sounded stupid. 

Her eyes snapped to him and he had a profound desire to step way back, or kneel on the sticky floor, or offer her the entirety of his country and flee to the Empty, _something._

But he only stared, because she was a predator. Because the darkness in her eyes demanded it.

Because he wanted to. 

“Did you like the tea?”

She licked bacon grease off her finger, and it should have been disgusting but instead he would do anything in his power to trade places with the digit. 

“It was… satisfactory.” No, that was also stupid. It was divine. It had ripped his mind a century away to the tent they almost shared, to the lake they bathed in between expeditions to the Tower, to the wild freedom when she smiled into the abyss and it was entirely teeth. 

His regret at never having touched her stung like an insect bite. 

“Hmm. I’ll try harder next time, then.”

He was familiar with her threats. He was less familiar when they were pointed in his direction. 

More foreign still: the desire to make her prove it. 

“See that you do,” he replied, before snatching the last half of her sandwich and taking the largest bite he could.

* * *

It had been days since he laid eyes on her, and for his surveillance to fail so handily meant only one thing: she was avoiding him. 

Suddenly. Unexpectedly. All efforts to crowd his presence had stopped, he hadn’t heard her laugh-snort or loud chewing or acidic insults in three and a half days.

Hadn’t smelled her, or felt her aether.

She was up to something.

He would have felt her pass through the tower and return to the Source. The Scions would have told him if there was a battle. Lyna would have told him if Riyo had gone hunting. 

Which meant she was working alone. 

A brisk, faux casual stroll through the Mean revealed the final two sets of her armor still being repaired, as well as a supply order for fish and tack and a personal dispute between the largest Ronso he had ever seen and the smallest Mystel. 

Riyo would have bet on their wedding. He, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get out of there. Her absence was crawling under his skin.

Her armor was still here. She hadn’t left. She was the most powerful being he had ever met, but even she had to sleep.

He would wait for her there.

* * *

When she finally arrived it was deep into the night and he had fallen asleep in her bed. Her arms were laden with something heavy that she dropped with an alarming clang, and he jolted awake in the dark. 

Both sets of armor from the Mean, he realized with a pit in his stomach. He had barely made it in time.

“Riyo.” His voice was sand. “I’m afraid I failed at staying awake. Apologies for the intrusion into your space.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” she snapped, and the steel in her voice was both unexpected and unwelcome. Ice curled around his spine; she was angry with him. _Defensive_ , his mind supplied. _Caught._

“True,” he began mildly. “Yet I see no cause for such concern as you are showing. Unless, perhaps… you were leaving? Mayhap without telling anyone.”

“You’re not my keeper.” She busied herself with armor, gargantuan spiky pieces he legitimately did not know how she carried. “What I do is none of your business.”

It stung the most, perhaps, because it was true.

The movement was not entirely conscious, but he was before her in the dark, rumpled from sleeping in her bed ( _smelling like her),_ barefoot on the cold stones. Unmasked, which felt more exposed than nudity ever would. 

“You _cannot_ leave,” he hissed. “Not again. Not me.”

“You do not _own_ me,” she snapped, and there, that was the fire, the blaze that roared away from her and burned him to a crisp.

He gripped her shoulders painfully. “I should! You _do_ need a keeper, Riyo. You are reckless and out of control—”

“What!” she shrieked, and his fore brain registered the sound as both undignified and cute, but his hind brain was all teeth for this fight.

“--will get yourself killed with some _useless_ notion of nobility—”

“Yes, like locking yourself in a tower for centuries alone—”

She was cut off when he smashed his mouth to hers, a sloppy claim that ground her voice to a halt. He gripped her chin and stared her down.

“Insolent,” he chided, low and dangerous. Her glowing eyes haunted him in the dark of her room, and while he had some sense he had gone too far, obliterated an invisible line that had been held dear these last weeks, he found he could not stop. “If you need to be entertained to stay put, so be it.”

Without giving himself time to hesitate, he hooked a finger in the first loop of her shift and pulled.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cackles*


	2. Chapter 2

Riyo was experienced with sex, but in a perfunctory manner. She possessed neither the time nor the inclination to stay until morning or placate with pillow talk. She wanted rough satisfaction, and then to get on with her life. 

She was experienced with leaving. She was not experienced with the way G’raha fucked his tongue into her mouth, drank her down, licked at her teeth, shoved a desperate moan into her lungs.

Sharing his air felt like dying.

To her shame, she’d forgotten how strong he was. His body as a young man was stocky and thick, and immortality had not changed that. The crystal was hotter than his skin and spoke to her aether like a livewire; it felt like sticking her hand into a machina socket. Her shift was in tatters and his broad hands pawed at her breasts with no grace. He took a nipple between thumb and forefinger, _pinched_ , pulled her closer to him by her tit until she squealed into his mouth. Her tail flicked with agitation until he twined his own around it, and she bit his lip and held it savagely — satisfied finally that his mouth, too, looked well-sucked and red.

She pulled back to breathe but he would not tolerate distance, putting his thumb against her lips. Pupils blown wide and dark, he pushed down, down, down.

She sucked the salt off his skin, made a show of hollowing her cheeks.

“Your knees, Riyo.” 

“Want them bruised, do you?” she teased, nipping with sharp teeth. 

“ _Yes,_ ” he hissed, and her eyes rolled back as she obediently dropped to the floor. 

The fucker had been holding out on her, primly buckled up in his robes. 

He was a feral beast.

She perched demurely atop her knees, cream tail whispering along the floor. She looked at him under her lashes, hoping to intensify his desire; if she knew how much he already wanted to consume her, she wouldn’t have bothered.

He gripped her hair and took control of her head, pushing her cheek into his clothed crotch and thrusting against her face. He was hard, _so_ hard — she imagined how he must ache, to be soothed only with the cool relief of her mouth.

She wondered if his cock was crystal, too. If it would shock her throat when she swallowed him down.

Riyo mouthed at him through the heavy fabric, dissatisfied and fussy at the barriers between them. 

“Off,” she demanded. The cloth was rough against her tongue.

“Brat.” He pushed the girth of his dick against her eager, open mouth. “You were going to leave me tonight. In the dark, like a thief.” His fist in her hair was utterly unforgiving. “Now you’re on your knees for my cock. This is all it's taken to beat you, this whole time?”

She snarled, just as angry at the sting of truth as the wetness dripping to the floor along her thigh. 

He bent over her, holding her mouth open with his length. She gripped the globes of his ass and pulled, whimpered and humped the empty air, pulled at his belt with need and frustration. 

“Tell me to stop, Riyo.” He was begging, she realized.

She held his eyes and sucked a wet spot over his shaft; he was leaking enough she could taste it through the cloth. 

She’d spent years of her life fantasizing about what he’d look like when he came; now, on the other side of Amaurot, she fantasized about feeling like herself again.

“No,” she said, voice steady. 

“ _Please,_ ” he groaned, and he was ragged and broken. Hollow, eager to be filled. “I will not stop, if you allow it. I cannot.”

She reached under his skirts, scraped her nails on his shaking thighs, and cupped his sack. Some skin was soft and pliant, some searingly hot and electric; she rolled him in her palm and let his whimpers fall like rain around her. She trailed up, ghosting over his cock. _Thick_ , her brain registered. She had no idea how he was going to fit inside her. How would he look at her when he was splitting her open? Would he beg then, too? She imagined herself begging for relief while he held her down and pushed his way in, she heard his grunts— 

“I am yours to use as you please.”

A strangled noise was all he managed before savagely divesting himself of every scrap of clothing. He cursed each layer he ever found necessary, ripped the threads that restrained him.

His crystal skin reflected the light of her eyes in the dark, and for a single stretched moment, she was on her knees beholding him in awe.

He knelt and cupped her face. Leaning into the tender gesture, she was pleased to see that no matter that he was born in Ilsabard and she the Ruby Sea, their tails spoke the same language to each other. She found nostalgic comfort in the gestures.

“You’re going to sit on my face,” he said quietly, “and then you’re going to come until I’ve decided you can stop.”

She arched a brow in challenge as he situated himself on the floor. He tugged her over him, facing away with knees spread. 

“Never, in case you were wondering,” he said mildly before spearing her labia with his tongue. “You’ll never have come enough for me to let you go.”

She shrieked as he stuffed his face into her in earnest. 

G’raha’s only spare resource in his life had been time. He was accomplished at going slow, at waiting eternities. The tip of his tongue made glacial circles around her clit, and he weathered her impatience with an ease that had her grinding her slit against his nose for friction.

The ease at which his thick fingers held her immobile had a new wave of wetness gushing over his lips.

He nuzzled her bud lovingly and pushed his tongue inside of her, relishing the grip of her walls. He was going to build her up and break her down. He was going to drink her come until he finally felt at peace. 

But first, she was going to beg him.


	3. Chapter 3

He licked her up like sticky toffee, edging her until her wails brought the walls of the Crystarium down around them. 

Good. Let everyone hear. 

He’d never been so hard in his gods damned life, never so out of his mind. He wanted to _hurt_ something, force his power out of his body until his outside matched the rawness within. He wanted to hurt _her_ — cheeky little thing, now that he finally knew she would like it. His tongue wandered away from her slit to the sensitive rim of her rear, and the surprised way she groaned his name sent him reeling. 

She may be the death of him, but not until she was so tired and full of his cum that she wouldn’t be able to leave. 

Actually touching her, _tasting_ her — it did nothing to calm his nerves, instead throwing accelerant on the fire. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t burn for her, but _this_. Now, he knew. 

Somehow it was the flavor of her cunt that damned him. A knowledge too intimate for him to have presumed the right to know it, but here he was, using her and wringing her dry, pushing his face against her sex to _suck_. He bruised her thighs and labia, toyed with how much of her he could fit in his mouth (quite a lot, he thought smugly), and when his own patience stretched too thin he would attack her clit with lips and tongue and nipping teeth, a singular focus bringing her over the edge again, and again, and again. 

He didn’t care how exhausted she was; he hadn’t even started to tire. 

And she hadn’t even started to beg.

When he had lost track of her orgasms and grown weary of batting her mouth away from his cock (if she sucked him now, he’d never stop coming) he pushed her off his face and took pity on her, fetching her water and a cool cloth from the basin. He cleaned her there on the floor, tenderly wiping at her thighs and swollen breasts, and if he dug his fingers into the bruises just to watch her moan, well — that was a sin he could bear. 

“I’d kill for a sandwich,” she said when he was done. The request was absurd and far too awkwardly loud in the quiet room, and he found himself laughing harder than he had in years, tears in his eyes and her blood red hair tumbling through his fingertips. 

* * *

For all his days, G’raha had been a man of singular focus. It had served each of his goals in turn; by no means was his success single-handed, but he did not have any illusions about the necessity of the tower’s master. None of this could have been accomplished without him.

Nor her.

Now here they were, pinnacles of power that had somehow, impossibly, careened through time to arrive at this singular moment — and he could laugh at the absurdity of it. The surreality. 

He was fucking the Warrior of Light and Darkness, and filthy, dainty pleas for his cock had tumbled from her lips. Pearls, every one of them. Rare and precious and divine. 

Her pussy had clenched around empty, desperate air while he made her wait. 

Her pretty knees were still pink from sucking him off.

Her hair, mussed from his fist.

The perfect peach of her ass that gave way to a dusting of scales and scarlet curls; her knuckles, red from exertion as they fisted the sheets; the swollen, wet lips of her labia spread _so wide_ around him. He grunted behind her, shoving forward another inch. She whimpered at the tight fit and it made him harder, a feat he considered impossible every second that passed. Riyo had never been truly feral, despite appearances; she was sloppy and audacious, yes, but she was calculated. The gleam in her eye as she stared over her shoulder — the look she gave him while she took him _so well_ — it was triumphant. It was a victory.

It was the fat head of his cock in her slick heat, his hand on the back of her head, his finger tracing her other hole to see how much she could really take — but he was not the conqueror.

She bucked back against him and he hit the soft give of her cervix. He expected the pain to be too sharp, a need for respite from their relentless fucking, but her toes curled and the shriek that came out of her was somehow new (fool that he was, he collected each sound to inflict upon himself later, determined to savor them all — he’d spilled himself across the floor of the crystal tower before just _imagining._ Now that he _knew?_ ).

In a fit of peak, he cupped his hand over her mouth and hauled her back to his chest, grunting at the angle change. It was deeper, sharper. The pleasure cut into his spine.

She would give him new sounds to cherish, because he was going to make her sing.

“Shut up, Riyo,” he growled. He ground into her, his crystalline hand on her clit, shocking her with his aether. She shook, and shook, and shook. She was a brittle leaf, almost broken. “Don’t make a sound.”

The brat whimpered instead, because of course she wouldn’t follow a direct order. His pace became furious; G’raha fucked to _hurt_ , to bruise, to make her _remember him_. The wide circles against her bud grew narrower and more focused; he directed his thrusts to the spongy front of her inner walls. 

He would stain this room with them both.

When she came, it was with a rare and vibrant sound: silence. Her mouth strained open against his palm and his fingers slipped in. Her back bowed until perhaps it would have broken, were he not cradling her so tightly. And her cunt — her cunt _gushed_ , and clenched, and sucked the gods damned life out of him. 

He howled his release into the depths of her, painting her in his seed, bruising her with his fingerprints. Her skin and hair and sheets were all mottled by the evidence of them. There was no mercy in this moment, each of them wrung dry in the heat of the other.

A few seconds passed before he realized she was crying.

With a jolt, he jerked out of her (the way his come fell from her body, _magnificent_ ) and awkwardly moved them face to face; his fingers wiped the salt from her cheeks, but as her ribs seized around air he realized dully that she wasn't crying.

Well. She was. But she was also _laughing._

“I feel _amazing_ ,” she said weakly. She traced her sex gingerly, fingers coming away slick. The shining thread that spread between them caught the light of her eyes, and his breath hitched around something tight in his chest. _Playing,_ he realized. She was playing with his come. 

“Don’t stop,” he whispered, too enraptured to care that it was more a question than instruction.

He felt a kind of madness rise as she rubbed his seed into her skin. His mind contracted uncomfortably around the merciless, irrefutable truth: she was his. She smelled and tasted of him. She was covered in him. She had begged for him.

_His._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so, so much for reading <3


End file.
